Tree Love: Street Trees and Stewardship in New York City

Posted on May 15, 2020 by mattjensen12345

Tree Love

Tree Love: Street Trees and Stewardship in New York City is a portrait of urban street trees and the spontaneous acts of stewardship found in tree beds. With nearly 700,000 street trees in New York City it is a project that might never end. The photographs here are a selection from an archive of thousands. I have walked hundreds of miles through almost every neighborhood and am spurred on by each instance of people caring for trees. I am also one of the many volunteer Citizen Pruners so it is impossible to see a tree as only a photographic subject. Old growth, self-planted, stunted, scarred, broken, coppiced, blighted, blight-resistant, rare, over-pruned, wild, each tree exhibits time and circumstance in its own way. And tree beds are as equally idiosyncratic with homemade tree guards, hand drawn signs, unique plant and flower combinations, decorations and ornaments, benches, bird feeders, and more often than not, too much garbage.

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Remember Moonlight

Posted on April 6, 2020 by mattjensen12345

moonlight seen
moonlight captured
moonlight printed
moonlight sold
moonlight written
moonlight sent
moonlight received
moonlight seen
moonlight cherished
moonlight left behind
moonlight stored
moonlight acquired
moonlight preserved
moonlight photographed
moonlight posted
moonlight purchased
moonlight packaged
moonlight sent
moonlight received
moonlight seen
moonlight remembered

DOWNLOAD BOOK VERSION

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Blue River Wonder Walk

Posted on January 9, 2019 by mattjensen12345

Blue River Wonder Walk

Blue River Wonder Walk is a site-specific work created for Open Spaces Kansas City, curated by Dan Cameron. The free double-sided poster was made available at different sites throughout Kansas City for the duration of the three month festival in the fall of 2018. The cover image features a spectacular London plane tree with an unbelievable exposed root system. The tree grows along Wolf Creek at the headwaters of the Blue River. The other side of the poster presents a map of the Blue River watershed and a detailed route that can be walked within the confines of Swope Park. The first essay, Blue River Wonder Walk, provides a step-by-step outline for this walk in Swope Park. The second essay, Confluencing, is a firsthand account of my attempts to identify and visit the confluences of every tributary that forms the Blue River. The essay also touches on the history of the waterway and its evolving state of environmental degradation.

Click here to download Blue River Wonder Walk

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I Dream of Fish

Posted on January 9, 2019 by mattjensen12345

I Dream of Fish

I Dream of Fish is a video essay that debuted in the exhibition LAND/SEA curated by Mike Calway-Fagen for Stove Works in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The video combines a 4000-word essay with video footage taken inside the “River Journey” Building at the Tennessee Aquarium. The video is one of my first biographical pieces; starting with memories of fishing at five-years-old and leading up to recent conversations with my husband. The essay explores the symbolic nature of dreams and the potential symbolism of memories. The piece also reveals how critical local landscapes are as places for interpersonal connections and as agents of spiritual growth.

The opening scene of the piece features an expanse of the Tennessee River as it flows past the aquarium in Chattanooga. The remaining sequences feature video and the ambient audio of the various spaces and fish tanks inside the Tennessee Aquarium. Many of the species of fish mentioned in the essay make an appearance in the footage, almost like characters synced to perform the text. The audio of the video vacillates from silence to exclamations made by visitors to the aquarium.

Click here to watch the full video: I Dream of Fish

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Park Wonder

Posted on December 7, 2017 by mattjensen12345

Park Wonder

Park Wonder, the exhibition and book, are the result of lengthy research and explorations of four New Jersey landscapes: Sandy Hook, the Great Swamp, the Passaic River and Watchung Reservation. Over the course of 18 months I walked the length of the Passaic River from Newark Bay to the headwaters and many miles of roads and trails in and around all the landscapes. Each of the landscapes has a unique connection to destruction despite being recreational today. The Passaic River was legendary for its serene beauty and because of the Great Falls in Paterson, until industry polluted the river and diverted water from the falls to run factories. Watchung Reservation and Sandy Hook housed Nike missiles during the Cold War. The Great Swamp was farmland before returning to wild space, but not before it was proposed as a site for an international airport. During my walks I was looking for wonderful things. In fact, it was a thing I wondered about that began the entire project. The remains of pre-colonial stone fishing weirs can be found at several points along the Passaic River. They are ancient utilitarian earthworks forgotten in the shadows of Home Depots and highways. In the end, the experience of walking in each landscape was the true wonder. The final exhibition, book and maps are all derived from these investigations.

Click here to download maps for Sandy Hook, the Great Swamp, the Passaic River and Watchung Reservation.

Click here to preview (or buy) the book online: Park Wonder with essays by Ian Frazier, Mary Birmingham, Tyler J. Kelley, Hazel England, Karl Fenske and Ruth Yablonsky

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Among Trees and Stones

Posted on December 7, 2017 by mattjensen12345

Among Trees and Stones

Among Trees and Stones was a commission for a walking-based work that activated Green-Wood Cemetery’s historic and expansive landscape. The final project consisted of a walking map, photographic archive of beech trees and an exhibition. The centerpiece of the project was a redesigned map that plots all of the 182 beech trees growing throughout the grounds as well as the burial sites of 82 landscape painters whose work can be found in the permanent collection. The maps, which encouraged visitors to walk from beech tree to beech tree, were available for free at the main gate. The beech tree became a symbolic icon for the project because it has been muse to so many landscape painters and also because it is facing a blight that could eliminate the trees in the wild over the next few decades.

The project also manifested as an exhibition in the historic Fort Hamilton Gate House, which had been closed to the public for decades. Built in 1873, the ornate Victorian building became the perfect cabinet of curiosities. The ground floor was curated with art and artifacts from the permanent collection. Each object on exhibit connected to landscape in some way with each of the respective artists or designers being buried at Green-Wood. The attic space, which had never been open to the public, was redesigned to showcase Green-Wood’s ongoing relationship with the landscape. The various alcoves displayed the library of the staff horticulturalist, fragments of monuments from the studio of the staff preservationist, and a collection of silk flower arrangements. Also on display were the collections that I built during my walks on the grounds: beech trees and found objects. I collected a range of objects from natural curiosities and contemporary cast-offs to 19th-century porcelain fragments and a hand-carved shell bead likely dating to pre-colonial times.

Click here to download the map Among Trees and Stones

Read the Hyperallergic article about the exhibition.

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A Place that Moves People (the future QueensWay)

Posted on March 15, 2017 by mattjensen12345

A Place that Moves People (the future QueensWay)

Photographic series, artist book and public walk commissioned by the Trust for Public Land

Intersecting the neighborhoods of Rego Park, Forest Hills, Richmond Hill, Woodhaven, Ozone Park and South Ozone Park, there is a thin strip of land that was once a railway. An unavoidable part of the landscape, it has been dormant for decades. Today it is more an extension of the natural world than of the built environment. The trackside landscape is the actual backyard of hundreds of homes, it is a place to walk dogs, feed stray cats, watch birds, dump garbage and it provides the perfect cover for young people who want to avoid adults. It is also something to wonder about. A section of the railway in Forest Park has been publicly accessible for years, but there are no signs or sanctioned woodchip paths and walking there feels like breaking the rules. The remaining three miles of landscape are only accessible by a few intrepid locals, who know the access points, footpaths and the easiest fences to climb.

Gestures and interactions between people and the future QueensWay are easily overlooked. Most visible flat surfaces have murals, tags, artful graffiti or signage. Several sections of the drab cement walls below the tracks have had colorful makeovers. Some fences and dead ends have a loose corner or hole that makes continuing on foot possible. Someone made and installed a wind chime made out of heavy steel pipes. On the surrounding streets residents tend to potted plants, care for community gardens, decorate their stoops and bay windows, feed birds and show they care in countless little ways.

Click here to preview the entire book.

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Three Wonder Walks (After the High Line)

Posted on March 15, 2017 by mattjensen12345

Three Wonder Walks (After the High Line)

Guide and walks commissioned by High Line Art in conjunction with the exhibition Wanderlust.

The High Line has proven that you can create a destination around the act of walking. The park provides a museum-like setting where plants and flowers are intensely celebrated. Walking on the High Line is part of a memorable adventure for so many visitors to New York City. It is not, however, a place where you can wander: you can go forward and back, enter and exit, sit and stand (off to the side). Almost everything within view is carefully planned and immaculately cultivated. The only exception to that rule is in the Western Rail Yards section, or “W.R.Y.” for short, where two stretches of “original” green remain steadfast holdouts. It is here—along rusty tracks running over rotting wooden railroad ties, braced by white marble riprap—where a persistent growth of naturally occurring flora can be found. Wild cherry, various types of apple, tiny junipers, bittersweet, Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrod, mullein, Indian hemp, and dozens of wildflowers, grasses, and mosses have all made a home for themselves. I believe they have squatters’ rights and should be allowed to stay. Their persistence created a green corridor out of an abandoned railway in the first place. I find the terrain intensely familiar and representative of the kinds of landscapes that can be found when wandering down footpaths that start where streets and sidewalks end. This guide presents three similarly wild landscapes at the beautiful fringes of New York City: places with big skies, ocean views, abundant nature, many footpaths, and colorful histories.

Click here to download Three Wonder Walks

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Reflecting on the Kuji River

Posted on March 15, 2017 by mattjensen12345

Reflecting on the Kuji River

C-prints, Found objects

Reflecting on the Kuji River is a site-specific installation of photographs and found objects commissioned by the Kenpoku Art Festival, which took place throughout Ibaraki, Japan, in the fall of 2016. The aerial photographs follow the Kuji River from the source in the mountains to the mouth of the river on the Pacific Coast. The photographs, taken from a helicopter, capture brief flashes of sunlight reflecting off the river. The series illustrates the dramatic curves, oxbows and meanders as well as the straight reaches and irrigation canals. The photographs were accompanied by small collections of objects found along the banks and sandbars of the Kuji River. Antique porcelain, glass, plastic and stones with quartz veins were arranged in the same space as the photographs. The images and objects presented a dual experience of the river, the photographs from above and the objects from the surface.

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